Hearing that John and Jim didn't talk to one another through Monday morning is almost bizarre, but we suppose the brothers already are locked into competition mode. John Harbaugh hopes the focus is on the players, not the Harbaughs.

"Every story has been told. There's nothing more to learn. ... I really hope the focus is not so much on that," Harbaugh said Monday.

Good luck with that. For at least one more day, Harbaugh was still talking about the AFC championship. Harbaugh went out of his way to compliment Bill Belichick for what the Patriots coach said during their postgame conversation.

"Coach Belichick after the game was so classy with what he said," Harbaugh said.

This is the second time Harbaugh went out of his way to mention the conversation. It's an interesting counterpart to the criticism that Belichick has taken for his usual postgame interview no-show with CBS.

"I'll treasure that conversation forever," Harbaugh told SI.com's Peter King. "Before the game, we talked, and he said maybe we should just skip the postgame handshake because it's such a circus. I said I didn't know; I thought we should do it, it's just the right thing to do.

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"And we did. He was so classy, so gracious. Complimentary about how we played, about our game plan, about how tough it is to play us. I told him how much we pattern our organization around theirs, how much we study them."

After two losses in the AFC title game, Harbaugh's team finally has broken through. He might be the lesser-known Harbaugh, but he's undeniably one of the most-successful NFL head coaches of the last five years.